"We're always proud of own particular world, aren't we?" he said.
They stared a little longer at the scene, then Lalla Dee turned from the wall.
"I think I'll go to bed," she told him. "I'll see you at breakfast, Mr. Idwall."
"A sweet kid," Crane thought as he left her at her cabin and walked on toward his own. Then the perilous task ahead of him claimed his thoughts. He must search Kin Nilga's cabin.
As he sat in his own dark cabin, waiting for the liner's passengers to retire, Crane's mind grappled with what lay ahead. If Kin Nilga was the possessor of the stolen brain, then entering the Saturnian's cabin was dangerous.
But he had to do it! Every hour that passed brought the Vulcan nearer Earth where Kin Nilga could easily trans-ship to another liner and throw him off the trail. And every hour increased the chance that one of the killer's diabolical attacks would take his life. Crane waited two hours, until silence filled the corridor. The last passengers had sought their cabins and only the ship's officers and men on duty in the control and rocket rooms remained up.
Then quietly the TSS man slipped out of his cabin, his hand resting on the hilt of his beam-pistol.
Except for the droning throb of the air-pumps, there was no sound as Rab Crane approached the door of Kin Nilga's cabin.
He stopped abruptly, stiffened, as he came opposite it. That door was slightly open. And from inside the Saturnian's dark cabin came a hoarse, smothered cry!
Crane shoved the door wide open, pistol aimed. He glimpsed a shadowy figure bending over the bunk, and even as he looked he heard a snap that could be only the dull cracking sound of a breaking neck!